The present invention relates to a device for blood filtering, in particular to a filtering device enabling a quick and simple filtration process for the separation of blood cells.
Blood filtering is required for the separation of the specific components of the human blood. In particular, separation is required as particular analysis may be carried out only on particular components of the human blood and other blood components may disturb the analysis. Human blood is comprised of different components, for example erythrocytes (red blood cells) which may have a size of about 7-8 μm; leucocytes (white blood cells) which may have a size of about 8 to 20 μm; thrombocytes (platelets) which may have a size of about 1.5 to 3 μm; and blood plasma. The erythrocytes, the leucocytes, and the thrombocytes represent more than 40 vol.-% of the whole blood. In order to separate the different components of the human blood, a centrifugation process has been established. However, a centrifugation process requires a considerable amount of time and a rather complex apparatus. For particular purposes, it may be required to obtain a separation of the blood components in a short time and with an apparatus of minimum complexity. Further, it may be required to provide an apparatus which is easy to handle, in particular for urgent or emergency medical applications.
A subsequent whole blood separation into plasma/serum can be advantageous for point-of-care testing devices, which are used to provide a quick blood analysis at/near the patient to get a quick blood analysis result outside of a clinical laboratory to make immediate decisions about patient care. Typically, point-of-care testing is performed by non-laboratory personnel. A quick foregoing plasma filtration process facilitates the quick blood analysis and enables new operating conditions for point-of-care devices, since most of them work with whole blood or with the aforementioned micro devices which lead to a very small yield of plasma/serum volume. The whole blood separation process can also be integrated within the point-of-care device.